Death and the Grave Digger (La Mort et le Fossoyeur) (c. 1895) byCarlos Schwabe is a visual compendium of symbolist motifs. Theangel ofDeath, pristine snow, and the dramatic poses of the characters all express symbolist longings fortransfiguration "anywhere, out of the world".
Symbolism was a late 19th-centuryart movement ofFrench andBelgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction againstnaturalism andrealism.
In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication ofCharles Baudelaire'sLes Fleurs du mal. The works ofEdgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stocktropes and images. The aesthetic was developed byStéphane Mallarmé andPaul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The term "symbolist" was first applied by the criticJean Moréas, who invented the term to distinguish the Symbolists from the relatedDecadents of literature and art.
The termsymbolism is derived from the word "symbol" which derives from theLatinsymbolum, a symbol of faith, andsymbolus, a sign of recognition, in turn from classical Greek σύμβολονsymbolon, an object cut in half constituting a sign of recognition when the carriers were able to reassemble the two halves. Inancient Greece, thesymbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed and then broken into two pieces which were given to the ambassadors from two allied city states as a record of the alliance.
Symbolism was largely a reaction against naturalism and realism, anti-idealistic styles which were attempts to represent reality in its gritty particularity, and to elevate the humble and the ordinary over the ideal. Symbolism was a reaction in favour ofspirituality,imagination, and dreams.[1] Some writers, such asJoris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists; for Huysmans, this change represented his increasing interest in religion and spirituality. Certain of the characteristic subjects of theDecadents represent naturalist interest in sexuality and taboo topics, but in their case this was mixed withByronicromanticism and the world-weariness characteristic of thefin de siècle period.
The Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship withParnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. While being influenced byhermeticism, allowingfreer versification, and rejecting Parnassian clarity and objectivity, it retained Parnassianism's love ofword play and concern for the musical qualities of verse. The Symbolists continued to admireThéophile Gautier's motto of "art for art's sake", and retained – and modified – Parnassianism's mood of ironic detachment.[2] Many Symbolist poets, includingStéphane Mallarmé andPaul Verlaine, published early works inLe Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. ButArthur Rimbaud publicly mocked prominent Parnassians and published scatological parodies of some of their main authors, includingFrançois Coppée – misattributed to Coppée himself – inL'Album zutique.[3]
One of Symbolism's most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic (andoccultist)Joséphin Péladan, who established theSalon de la Rose + Croix. The Salon hosted a series of six presentations of avant-garde art, writing and music during the 1890s, to give a presentation space for artists embracing spiritualism, mysticism, and idealism in their work. A number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon.
Jean Moréas published theSymbolist Manifesto ("Le Symbolisme") inLe Figaro on 18 September 1886 (see1886 in poetry).[4] TheSymbolist Manifesto namesCharles Baudelaire,Stéphane Mallarmé, andPaul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. Moréas announced that symbolism was hostile to "plain meanings, declamations, false sentimentality and matter-of-fact description", and that its goal instead was to "clothe the Ideal in a perceptible form" whose "goal was not in itself, but whose sole purpose was to express the Ideal."
Ainsi, dans cet art, les tableaux de la nature, les actions des humains, tous les phénomènes concrets ne sauraient se manifester eux-mêmes; ce sont là des apparences sensibles destinées à représenter leurs affinités ésotériques avec des Idées primordiales.
(Thus, in this art movement, representations of nature, human activities and all real life events don't stand on their own; they are rather veiled reflections of the senses pointing to archetypal meanings through their esoteric connections.)[4][5]
In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friendHenri Cazalis, 'to depict not the thing but the effect it produces'.[6]
In 1891, Mallarmé defined Symbolism as follows, "To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the delight of the poem, which consists in the pleasure of guessing little by little; tosuggest is, that is the dream. It is the perfect use of this mystery that constitutes the symbol: to evoke an object, gradually in order to reveal a state of the soul or, inversely, to choose an object and from it identify a state of the soul, by a series of deciphering operations... There must always be enigma in poetry."[7]
While describing the pre-World War I friendship, which defied the pervasiveanti-German sentiment andrevanchism of theBelle Époque, between French symbolistsPaul Verlaine andStéphane Mallarmé and young and aspiring German symbolist poetStefan George, Michael and Erika Metzger have written, "For the Symbolists, the pursuit of 'art for art's sake', was a highly serious – nearly a sacred – function, since beauty, in and of itself, stood for a higher meaning beyond itself. In their ultimate higher striving, the French Symbolists are not far from thePlatonic ideals ofthe Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and this idealistic aspect was undoubtedly what appealed to George far more than theEstheticism, theBohemianism, and the apparentNihilism so often superficially associated with this group."[8]
Portrait ofCharles Baudelaire (c. 1862), whose writing was a precursor of the symbolist style
The symbolist poets wished to liberate techniques of versification in order to allow greater room for "fluidity", and as such were sympathetic with the trend towardfree verse, as evident in the poems ofGustave Kahn andEzra Pound. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe; symbolic imagery was used to signify the state of the poet'ssoul.T. S. Eliot was influenced by the poetsJules Laforgue,Paul Valéry andArthur Rimbaud who used the techniques of the Symbolist school,[9] though it has also been said[by whom?] that 'Imagism' was the style to which both Pound and Eliot subscribed (see Pound'sDes Imagistes).Synesthesia was a prized experience; poets sought to identify and confound the separate senses of scent, sound, and colour. InBaudelaire's poemCorrespondences (which mentionsforêts de symboles ("forests of symbols") and is considered the touchstone of French Symbolism):[10]
Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants, Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies, – Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,
Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies, Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens, Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.
(There are fragrances that are fresh like children's skin, calm like oboes, green like meadows – And others, rotten, heady, and triumphant,
having the expansiveness of infinite things, like amber, musk, benzoin, and incense, which sing of the raptures of the soul and senses.)
A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu : voyelles…
(A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels…)
– both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlierRomanticism of poetry usedsymbols, but these symbols were unique and privileged objects. The symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. "The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, although this does not yield a single message so much as a superior network of associations."[11] Symbolist symbols are notallegories, intended to represent; they are instead intended toevoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmé's "Le cygne" ("TheSwan") is of a swan trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French,cygne is a homophone ofsigne, a sign. The overall effect is of overwhelming whiteness; and the presentation of the narrative elements of the description is quite indirect:
Le vierge, le vivace, et le bel aujourd'hui Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d’aile ivre Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre Le transparent glacier des vols qui n’ont pas fui! Un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre…
(The virgin, lively, and beautiful today – Will it tear us up with a drunken wingbeat This hard forgotten lake that lurks beneath the frost, The transparent glacier of flights not taken A swan of long ago remembers that it is he Magnificent but without hope, who breaks free…)
Verlaine argued that in their individual and very different ways, each of these hitherto neglected poets foundgenius a curse; it isolated them from their contemporaries, and as a result these poets were not at all concerned to avoidhermeticism and idiosyncratic writing styles.[12] They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives, and often given to self-destructive tendencies. These traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Verlaine's concept of thepoète maudit in turn borrows from Baudelaire, who opened his collectionLes fleurs du mal with the poemBénédiction, which describes a poet whose internal serenity remains undisturbed by the contempt of the people surrounding him.[13]
In this conception of genius and the role of the poet, Verlaine referred indirectly to theaesthetics ofArthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher ofpessimism, who maintained that the purpose of art was to provide a temporary refuge from the world of strife of thewill.[14]
Schopenhauer's aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme; they both tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife andwill. As a result of this desire for an artistic refuge, the symbolists used characteristic themes ofmysticism and otherworldliness, a keen sense ofmortality, and a sense of the malign power ofsexuality, whichAlbert Samain termed a "fruit of death upon the tree of life."[15] Mallarmé's poemLes fenêtres[16] expresses all of these themes clearly. A dying man in a hospital bed, seeking escape from the pain and dreariness of his physical surroundings, turns toward his window but then turns away in disgust from
… l'homme à l'âme dure Vautré dans le bonheur, où ses seuls appétits Mangent, et qui s'entête à chercher cette ordure Pour l'offrir à la femme allaitant ses petits, …
(… the hard-souled man, Wallowing in happiness, where only his appetites Feed, and who insists on seeking out this filth To offer to the wife suckling his children, …)
and in contrast, he "turns his back on life" (tourne l’épaule à la vie) and he exclaims:
Je me mire et me vois ange! Et je meurs, et j'aime – Que la vitre soit l'art, soit la mysticité – A renaître, portant mon rêve en diadème, Au ciel antérieur où fleurit la Beauté!
(I look at myself and I seem like an angel! and I die, and I love – Whether the mirror might be art, or mysticism – To be reborn, bearing my dream as a crown, Under that former sky where Beauty flourishes!)
The symbolist style has frequently been confused with theDecadent movement, the name derived from French literary critics in the 1880s, suggesting the writers were self indulgent and obsessed with taboo subjects.[17] While a few writers embraced the term, most avoided it. Jean Moréas'manifesto was largely a response to this polemic. By the late 1880s, the terms "symbolism" and "decadence" were understood to be almost synonymous.[18] Though the aesthetics of the styles can be considered similar in some ways, the two remain distinct. The symbolists were those artists who emphasized dreams and ideals; the Decadents cultivatedprécieux, ornamented, orhermetic styles, andmorbid subject matters.[19] The subject ofthe decadence of the Roman Empire was a frequent source of literary images and appears in the works of many poets of the period, regardless of which name they chose for their style, as in Verlaine's "Langueur":[20]
Je suis l'Empire à la fin de la Décadence, Qui regarde passer les grands Barbares blancs En composant des acrostiches indolents D'un style d'or où la langueur du soleil danse.
(I am the Empire at the endgame of decadence, watching the great pale barbarians passing by, all the while composing lazy acrostic poems in a gilded style where the languishing sun dances.)
Symbolism in literature is distinct from symbolism in art although the two were similar in many aspects. In painting, symbolism can be seen as a revival of some mystical tendencies in theRomantic tradition, and was close to the self-consciously morbid and privatedecadent movement.
The symbolist painters used mythological and dream imagery. The symbols used by symbolism are not the familiaremblems of mainstreamiconography but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references. More a philosophy than an actual style of art, symbolism in painting influenced the contemporaryArt Nouveau style andLes Nabis.[14]
Symbolism had some influence on music as well. Many symbolist writers and critics were early enthusiasts of the music ofRichard Wagner,[22] an avid reader of Schopenhauer.
Symbolism's style of thestatic andhieratic adapted less well to narrative fiction than it did to poetry.Joris-Karl Huysmans' 1884 novelÀ rebours (English title:Against Nature orAgainst the Grain) explored many themes that became associated with the symbolist aesthetic. This novel, in which very little happens, catalogues the psychology of Des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusiveantihero.Oscar Wilde was influenced by the novel as he wroteSalome, and Huysmans' book appears inThe Picture of Dorian Gray: the titular character becomes corrupted after reading the book.[23]
Paul Adam was the most prolific and representative author of symbolist novels.[citation needed]Les Demoiselles Goubert (1886), co-written withJean Moréas, is an important transitional work betweennaturalism and symbolism. Few symbolists used this form. One exception wasGustave Kahn, who publishedLe Roi fou in 1896. In 1892,Georges Rodenbach wrote the short novelBruges-la-Morte, set in the Flemish town ofBruges, which Rodenbach described as a dying, medieval city of mourning and quiet contemplation: in a typically symbolist juxtaposition, the dead city contrasts with the diabolical re-awakening of sexual desire.[24] The cynical, misanthropic, misogynistic fiction ofJules Barbey d'Aurevilly is sometimes considered symbolist, as well.Gabriele d'Annunzio wrote his first novels in the symbolist manner.
The characteristic emphasis on an internal life of dreams and fantasies have made symbolist theatre difficult to reconcile with more recent trends.Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's dramaAxël (rev. ed. 1890) is a definitive symbolist play. In it, twoRosicrucian aristocrats become enamored of each other while trying to kill each other, only to agree to commit suicide mutually because nothing in life could equal their fantasies. From this play,Edmund Wilson adopted the titleAxel's Castle for his influential study of the symbolist literary aftermath.
Maurice Maeterlinck, also a symbolist playwright, wroteThe Blind (1890),The Intruder (1890),Interior (1891),Pelléas and Mélisande (1892), andThe Blue Bird (1908).Eugénio de Castro is considered one of the introducers of Symbolism in theIberian Peninsula. He wroteBelkiss, "dramatic prose-poem" as he called it, about the doomed passion of Belkiss,The Queen of Sheba, to Solomon, depicting in an avant-garde and violent style the psychological tension and recreating very accurately the tenth century BC Israel. He also wroteKing Galaor andPolycrates' Ring, being one of the most prolific Symbolist theoreticians.[25]
Lugné-Poe (1869–1940) was an actor, director, and theatre producer of the late nineteenth century. Lugné-Poe "sought to create a unified nonrealistic theatre of poetry and dreams through atmospheric staging and stylized acting".[26] Upon learning about symbolist theatre, he never wanted to practice any other form. After beginning as an actor in theThéâtre Libre and Théâtre d'Art, Lugné-Poe grasped on to the symbolist movement and founded theThéâtre de l'Œuvre where he was manager from 1892 until 1929. Some of his greatest successes include opening his own symbolist theatre, producing the first staging ofAlfred Jarry'sUbu Roi (1896), and introducing French theatregoers to playwrights such asIbsen andStrindberg.[26]
Black night. White snow. The wind, the wind! It will not let you go. The wind, the wind! Through God's whole world it blows
The wind is weaving The white snow. Brother ice peeps from below Stumbling and tumbling Folk slip and fall. God pity all!
From "The Twelve" (1918) Trans. Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky[28]
Night, street and streetlight, drug store, The purposeless, half-dim, drab light. For all the use live on a quarter century – Nothing will change. There's no way out.
You'll die – and start all over, live twice, Everything repeats itself, just as it was: Night, the canal's rippled icy surface, The drug store, the street, and streetlight.
"Night, street and streetlight, drugstore..." (1912)Trans. by Alex Cigale
Among English-speaking artists, the closest counterpart to symbolism wasaestheticism. ThePre-Raphaelites were contemporaries of the earlier symbolists, and have much in common with them. Symbolism had a significant influence onmodernism (Remy de Gourmont considered theImagists were its descendants)[29] and its traces can also be detected in the work of many modernist poets, includingT. S. Eliot,Wallace Stevens,Conrad Aiken,Hart Crane, andW. B. Yeats in the anglophone tradition andRubén Darío in Hispanic literature. The early poems ofGuillaume Apollinaire have strong affinities with symbolism. Early Portuguese Modernism was heavily influenced by Symbolist poets, especiallyCamilo Pessanha;Fernando Pessoa had many affinities to Symbolism, such as mysticism, musical versification, subjectivism and transcendentalism.
Edmund Wilson's 1931 studyAxel's Castle focuses on the continuity with symbolism and several important writers of the early twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on Yeats, Eliot,Paul Valéry,Marcel Proust,James Joyce, andGertrude Stein. Wilson concluded that the symbolists represented a dreaming retreat into
things that are dying–the wholebelle-lettristic tradition of Renaissance culture perhaps, compelled to specialize more and more, more and more driven in on itself, as industrialism and democratic education have come to press it closer and closer.[30]
After the beginning of the 20th century, symbolism had a major effect onRussian poetry even as it became less and less popular in France. Russian symbolism originally began as an emulation of the French original, but then, under the influence ofVyacheslav Ivanov, it radically diverged until it became something unrecognizable. Steeped in the doctrines ofEastern Orthodoxy and the Christian mystical philosophy ofVladimir Solovyov, it began the careers of several major poets such asAlexander Blok,Andrei Bely,Boris Pasternak, andMarina Tsvetaeva. Bely's novelPetersburg (1912) is considered the greatest example of Russian symbolist prose.
The style was largely inaugurated byNikolai Minsky's articleThe Ancient Debate (1884) andDmitry Merezhkovsky's bookOn the Causes of the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature (1892). Both writers promoted extremeindividualism and the act of creation.Merezhkovsky was known for his poetry as well as a series of novels ongod-men, among whom he counted Christ,Joan of Arc,Dante,Leonardo da Vinci,Napoleon, and (later)Hitler. His wife,Zinaida Gippius, also a major poet of early symbolism, opened a salon inSt Petersburg, which came to be known as the "headquarters of Russian decadence".Andrei Bely'sPetersburg (novel) a portrait of the social strata of the Russian capital, is frequently cited as a late example of Symbolism in 20th century Russian literature.
The symbolist painters were an important influence onexpressionism andsurrealism in painting, two movements which descend directly from symbolism proper. Theharlequins, paupers, and clowns ofPablo Picasso's "Blue Period" show the influence of symbolism, and especially ofPuvis de Chavannes. In Belgium, symbolism became so popular that it came to be known as a national style, particularly in landscape painting:[34] the static strangeness of painters likeRené Magritte can be considered as a direct continuation of symbolism. The work of some symbolist visual artists, such asJan Toorop, directly affected the curvilinear forms ofart nouveau.
Many early motion pictures also employ symbolist visual imagery and themes in their staging, set designs, and imagery. The films ofGerman expressionism owe a great deal to symbolist imagery. The virginal "good girls" seen in the cinema ofD. W. Griffith, and thesilent film "bad girls" portrayed byTheda Bara, both show the continuing influence of symbolism, as do theBabylonian scenes from Griffith'sIntolerance. Symbolist imagery lived on longest inhorror film: as late as 1932,Carl Theodor Dreyer'sVampyr showed the obvious influence of symbolist imagery; parts of the film resembletableau vivant re-creations of the early paintings ofEdvard Munch.[35]
^Michael and Erika Metzger (1972),Stefan George, Twayne's World Authors Series. Page 21.
^Untermeyer, Louis, Preface toModern American Poetry Harcourt Brace & Co New York 1950
^Pratt, William.The Imagist Poem, Modern Poetry in Miniature (Story Line Press, 1963, expanded 2001).ISBN1-58654-009-2
^Olds, Marshal C."Literary Symbolism", originally published (as Chapter 14) inA Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture, edited by David Bradshaw and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Pages 155–162.
^David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye,Russian orientalism: Asia in the Russian mind from Peter the Great to the emigration, New Haven: Yale UP, 2010, p. 211 (online).
^Quoted inBrooker, Joseph (2004).Joyce's Critics: Transitions in Reading and Culture. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 73.ISBN978-0299196042.
^Boris Christa, 'Andrey Bely and the Symbolist Movement in Russia' inThe Symbolist Movement in the Literature of European Languages John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1984, p. 389
Anna Balakian,The Symbolist Movement: a critical appraisal. New York: Random House, 1967
Michelle Facos,Symbolist Art in Context. London: Routledge, 2011
Russell T. Clement,Four French Symbolists: A Sourcebook on Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Maurice Denis. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Bernard Delvaille,La poésie symboliste: anthologie. Paris: Seghers, 1971.ISBN2-221-50161-6
John Porter Houston and Mona Tobin Houston,French Symbolist Poetry: An Anthology. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1980.ISBN0-253-20250-7
Michael Gibson,Symbolism London: Taschen, 1995ISBN3822893242
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal. "Theatre As Church: The Vision of the Mystical Anarchists" inRussian History, 1977, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1977), pp. 122-141.Available Online.
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